Kanata: Totally Dead?
by ChakiChakiGirl
Summary: We all know Konata's awesome twin-mom Kanata's long dead...but how dead? By the authoress of Blueberry and Bunny Z and Kanata Thawed and Miyuki's SpacedOut Secret


Kanata – Totally Dead??

by ChakiChakiGirl

Authoress of "Kanata's Dream", "Kanata Thawed", "Miyuki's Spaced-Out Secret", and PPGZ's "Blueberry" and "Bunny Z"

"Good-bye dad!!" Konata Izumi cried at the front door, slinging her knapsack over her shoulder and a laptop under one arm. "You've gone too far, you lolicon freak! I turned my head too long, even after Yu-chan ran away -- but I can't take it anymore!"

"Wait, Konata!" Sōjirō Izumi blurted, "I – I didn't mean it! I didn't mean to brush your -- your blouse while reaching for the soy sauce!"

"Sauce, hell! It was right in front of you! I've overlooked all your pervy lolicon moves like the Nile with all your sly touching and fondling all these years and now, just as I'm finally starting to grow boobs you're – you're –! Oh, I'm so glad mom's not alive to see this!"

"She is alive, Konata!!" Sōjirō blurted, too late biting his lip before his diminutive daughter snickered.

"Good try, dad!"

"No –!" Sōjirō said after a mullful pause turning him even older than he was. "I – I mean that! I swear!"

"Dad, pleading insanity's not giving me any guilt trip to stay here with your creepy hands!"

"I'm not lying to you, Konata! Yes, I might seem a despicable person at times in your eyes, but you've never known me to outrageously lie to you!"

Grudgingly Konata simmered down. "There's always a first time!"

"Not this one, Konata. There are things I've – kept back from you, but I've never deceived you, like the true reason we're so poor."

Konata snorted. "No mystery in that! You make peanuts off your writing!"

"Wrong. I've done very well at my Yaoi and manga."

"Yaoi?? You write that kind of -- stuff??"

"And genres far darker. It's very profitable."

"So why are we so dirt poor??" Konata dubiously retorted and Sōjirō sighed and faced the window.

"Because the annual fees are just – astronomical. But I must maintain them at all cost."

"Fees? What fees??" she asked and he turned to her like a fateful threshold had been crossed.

"I cannot tell you here because it would break a promise to myself...but, since you are coming into majority, perhaps it's time you know."

"Know? What?"

"You have to come with me, Konata."

"Come with you? Where??"

"Again, I can't tell you. My honor's obliged to my word. You must trust me."

It twisted Konata's heart that she didn't quite trust him, her own father, yet there was a wizen cast to his face that told her he was too pained to trick or deceive her.

- - -

It was well into midnight when the car stopped and Sōjirō turned off the engine. "You can take it off now, Konata."

Smirking, Konata took off her sunglasses then the narrow elastic band that covered her big jade-green eyes which blinked around and saw that they were outside a low-lit shed against a cliff face in a mountain forest. There were no other lights around and it was like they were on the dark side of the moon.

"Jeese, dad! I must've looked like a jerk, driving for hours wearing sunglasses at night!"

"It's for your own good – and company security policy."

"What company policy?" she asked but he'd already left the car and was walking to the shed where a yawning guard hopped to attention and bowed and examined something in Sōjirō's wallet then saluted and walked them to a great rusty iron shield in the cliff face, as though a highway tunnel had been plugged there. It looked familiar to Konata only due her deep web surfing for arcane facts because her school textbooks and lessons, indeed Japanese television itself, glossed over the period in history when Japan frantically took over mines and highway and railway tunnels and blasted them even deeper and larger to accommodate the population of its cities from vicious B-29 bombings and as last stand shelters from the dreaded American invasion. That period was still so sensitive that not only had Japan blasted close or sealed off most of these tunnels, but even denied them for businesses for storage or manufacturing, though Konata still couldn't understand the shame after so long.

The guard headed to a door that evidently had been cut out of the shield a few decades ago and he unlocked three large padlocks and opened the door and threw a switch that lit a long rocky tunnel. Konata was surprised to see a closed-circuit TV camera booth where the guard discretely deposited himself while Sōjirō lead her down the echoey tunnel which had power cables and odd pipes suspended from the roof.

"Man! Talk about claustrophobia heaven!" Konata thought aloud, trying not to think about millions of tons of rock overhead. Few things frightened Konata and being entombed was one of them. "Dad, this place isn't going to cave in or anything anytime soon, is it?"

Sōjirō mildly smiled. "These places were meant to survive the biggest bombs during the big war – maybe the biggest one too," he tactfully and soberly said.

"Well, can't you tell me why we're here yet?"

"In a few moments," Sōjirō said, like the pipes and cables overhead turning inside a large galley that appeared and for a moment both stood still, Sōjirō as though in solemn reminisce, and Konata in startled awe, to see a chamber lined with dozens of silvery capsules the size of a large sofa. each plugged into huge pipes and cables stringing to huge tanks.

Konata shook her head in awe; "Man! This is the pits of creepsville! Where are we, dad??"

"Together again," he half whispered, moving along the line of capsules until at number eleven he stopped and placed his hand on it and closed his eyes in silent prayer.

"Dad, you're scaring me. What is this place?"

"We're with – your mother."

"What??"

"Kanata," Sōjirō quietly said, stroking capsule eleven.

"Dad – you're seriously flipping me out!"

"No, Konata. I was here when they wrapped her in foil like a sleeping child and sank her in liquid nitrogen, waiting for the day when there's a cure for what – nearly killed her."

Konata shook her head, totally flipped out. "Wait! Dad – are you saying that – that mom – my mom's inside this thing??"

"Yes. For over eighteen years."

The unreality of it all boggled Konata. "And you – believe she's still alive??"

"I said that she's not dead," he demurred, only facing the capsule.

"But – but everyone says she's gone! Her urn!"

"I had to deceive others, of that I'm not proud, but I'm unashamed," Sōjirō declared, looking up if for the first time at the other capsules. "Many had to deceive their friends and family to rest here instead of as ashes in vases or crumbling bones in the ground. For me it was simple since our customs make grieving such a private affair, and this cryonics company is very at good making appearances for their fee. They were just outside our bedroom door when Kanata's fay smile faded and the twinkle fell under her eyelids and she took her last long sigh..." He paused with solemn reflection. "The company; they were brutally and understandably efficient. As soon as they heard her EKG flat-line tone they burst in and pushed me aside from wasting precious seconds grieving over her to rush her out into their truck where their equipment was waiting. In less than a minute they had her in an ice water tank and hooked up a heart-lung machine and i.v.s full of their serums before rushing her here to process and preserve under highly controlled conditions and out of the public eye."

Almost dazed by unreality, Kontata shook her head. "That's - crazy! It's – It's totally unreal!"

"It's all true, Konata. Many don't believe in this, I know, but none can prove it won't work. There are hundreds like these around the world, resting and waiting a few degrees above absolute zero. Some are the very successful, the very wealthy, the very old, the very sick, the very desperate, the life lovers who won't accept death lying down – and why should we? Death is about the easiest thing in the universe. Why not make life a hard long war?"

"But she – lost, dad."

"No. Not until she's dust will I accept that. I just – couldn't leave her to the worms deep the cold cold earth. That's the ultimate indignity!"

"But – she can't really be alive, frozen like a - a fish stick like this, can she? She has to be – be – dead!"

"That's only one-hundred percent true and absolute when you're in a coffin or an urn. Here, there's a chance above zero to live again; slim perhaps, but it's not zero. One day when the world's ready, she'll be thawed and awaken and cured of her frailness for good, and we'll know her warmth again, Konata. Her candy smile, her twinkling eyes, the tinkle of her laugh. We have a chance to know her again and not by wishing and praying for life against death's impossibility."

Konata shook her head, trying to grope for words. "It's – It's – almost gross. Suppose it doesn't work? Or worst – barely does??"

"Then we live with it. It can't be any worst than totally missing her, not having her."

"It's – it's crazy! Is this where all your money goes?? To keep her in some freezer forever?? It's totally wacko!!" she wildly blurted and Sōjirō frowned and straightened.

"Why? Wouldn't you like to see your mother again? Wouldn't you want to help her escape the clutches of death? Of nonexistence? Do you still remember loving her – or were you just too young to?"

Konata paused, not wanting to go that way. "Did she know you were going to do this to her?"

Sōjirō paused then half-turned. "No... Kanata was – a nature child."

"Then – maybe you should honor her natural wish, dad."

"Kanata would consider your games okata very unnatural, Konata," Sōjirō coolly retorted. "As she would've been really been dismayed of your school scores, not living up to your natural potential.." He touched the capsule. "In that case, I could see why you'd be against this then."

Her piqued impulse to snap back dampened by the sobriety of the place, Konata sheepishly gnashed her slight but cute harelip and tentatively touched the chilly capsule. "So now I have to wonder whether she's really dead or not, right?" she rued, wishing to lay fault.

"The thing here is you can wish what you want to ease your soul. For me, her flame's not all extinguished yet."

Konata fell back on her muddled thought and drifted around the capsule. "I – I know how much you miss her, daddy...but, I almost wish you hadn't shown me."

He nodded and thought. "The hypnotist who helped me stop smoking cigarettes...he could help you forget all about this – if you want, Konata."

Konata reconsidered then shook her head. "No. It'd be like believing a lie, wouldn't it?"

Sōjirō straightened and moved up to her and for a moment she felt apprehension but the look in his eyes looked up her almost reverently;

"What does Kanata say inside you, Konata?" he softly asked as though she were plugged into some racial memory or astral frequency, and though doubting, she shied at the capsule even as she plumbed her own voiceless feelings. She touched the cold aluminum shell, slowly stroked its calling. "Well?"

Konata deigned a soft shrug. "I guess...she'd be – happy to see you fighting death for her, like a white knight fighting a dragon guarding a princess – but it doesn't mean I myself feel that way. It's just too – creepy."

Sōjirō smiled and patted her shoulders. "What's creepy is how much you're like Kanata at times, using pretty much the same words. I cannot tell you how much you've made missing her bearable for me, Konata."

A smile leaked Konata's face before she stiffened her resolve. "Well...if I'm on mom's wavelength so much, then maybe you can tell me since you knew her even when she was a kid; did your perversion chase mom mostly because she was small – like a kid?"

Sōjirō blushed at her critical insinuation, even though he knew Konata long suspected the truth. "I – was honorable to Kanata all the way to our marriage."

"As 'honorable' as you'd been with me?" she coolly accused and he sheepishly sighed.

"My – ungovernable foibles could've been a lot worst, Konata."

"Right, I could've been born not looking like mom!"

"That's undeserved!"

"Yea? You were already more than twice mom's age when she was twelve, so you were just a dirty old man stringing along Junior Miss Goody-Shoes along till you conned her to marry you -- or did you have to??"

Sōjirō bridled. "I've – never acted on my loli perversion – on anyone, Konata, and of all people you were the most vulnerable. Your youth was clay in my hands to create a new Kanata by, and you would've accepted that role as naturally as you feel you're my daughter."

"Dad, that's really sick -- even for you!"

"If I were that sick, you wouldn't be standing there berating me so, daughter," he parried, sighing and sheepishly turned to the capsule. "My childhood fantasies and wildness doesn't excuse me, I know. All I ask of you is to believe me that it's a struggle to see you and her across my table every day. Were a I bachelor, I'd committed seppuku long ago to join her in heaven before I learned of this process!" he admitted to her jolt before he sighed and bowed to her. "I wish nothing bad to happen to you, Konata. I will die for you. I'll change for you, Konata. This I promise. Stay home. Please."

Konata warily eyed him but politely bowed back. "Mom hears you, dad," she quietly admonished before giving a long pause before a soft but ginger hug.

Later as they were about to enter the car Konata paused to gaze the bright hard stars. "What is it, Konata?" asked Sōjirō, and quizzical, she faced the tunnel door.

"Your spirit's only free to walk the earth when you die, true?" she wondered.

"Hm. That's quite a question if you're not absolutely dead, isn't it? What do you think?" Sōjirō asked as though she was hedging an answer. Konata lightly shrugged.

"Remember when...forget it. Maybe...one day I'll get a chance to ask, uh?" Konata demurely quipped with a relief and hope she never imagined before ducking into the car.

FIN?


End file.
